


The Voice of Cecil Palmer

by vwhale



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Dreams, M/M, Strexcorp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3794092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vwhale/pseuds/vwhale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Private recordings of Cecil's might help solve a major town mystery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying out a new fandom, I've been listening to Welcome to Night Vale in a binge for the past two weeks, so I hope I make a good contribution to the fandom.

**Recording #15 Length 8:32**

I am recording this for you in a rush- the mandatory riot every other twenty-first is getting a little rowdy outside, and I certainly don’t want to miss that. The camera on my iphone finally stopped leaking black ichor and shocking me with mild voltages of electricity every time I tried to take a selfie, so I’ll get to maybe take a few pictures of the overturned vehicles and burning monoliths. The details of my urgency are blurring, so I figured I might as well record this now, even as the thought still slips just out of my grasp.

Last night, I had a dream. 

Now, this may not be alarming to some of you who have been subjected to recent… ah… _services_ in which Strexcorp provides you with prerecorded scenes of the smiling god we must all come to… love. This shouldn’t alarm you, who know that of late we have had no _free_ \- I mean, have had certain, _caring_ censorship in our unconscious, vulnerable sleep.

_[Soft, forlorn laugh]_

Even now, in my own personal files, I'm too scared to speak my mind.

I had a dream, fellow citizens. And in this dream, was a mountain. 

It reached up, it’s peak blurring into obscurity behind clouds, or maybe my eyes were simply limited by the determined, faltering disbelief in my hardwired mind from my place somewhere above its base, in a building. No, a balcony. My breath and hands shook, balled into fists at my side as if, perhaps the bite of nails to flesh could shake me from where I stood despite my firm ground supported by the very thing I was still trying so feircly to deny.

I do not remember what happened next. 

I only know that there was an ease, the air was crisp and sharp, revitalizing as if I had gone days breathing in stale breaths. This dream felt akin to water, cool and sweet in the desert’s humming, dry, mummifying sand. It was a hand, reaching through the bars of some prison cell, straining, fingertips just barely catching the cool breeze that was once so familiar. Now, it is only an echo.

I have asked Carlos if he knows anything about mountains, and he has been looking into it- telling me about plates that move the earth and continents that wander, but I do not understand. I understand, _less_ than I did before. I understand, like a child wanting so much to know what they are not yet grown enough to grasp. I understand, as a man who has forgotten what was once so important to him, left with melancholy and an absence where sentiment once resided in abundance. 

_[Shouting voices sound, muffled in the background. There is a shuffling of papers.]_

I will document this as it continues, listener, but for now I must go join the riots in the streets.


	2. Chapter 2

**Recording #18**

Whoever is listening to this -documentation- recording, I apologize for any background sounds that might come up. I’m not using my radio equipment, of course, that’d be _dangerous_. Instead I am using my own personal… laptop microphone. Again, sorry. A scientist friend of Carlos is over, sitting in the living room. She is bent over a layout of papers, scribbling furiously over numbers that seem as expansive and intricate of an array as a map. Perhaps it is one. He stands beside her, arms crossed over his chest, eyebrows drawn down in the same sharp concentration they’re in when he’s trying not to burn toast some mornings, or the first few times the moon was waning and I did that _thing_ that happens to 47% of the Nightvale population.

They’ve been talking in low voices, hers completely undistinguishable to me- but his is occasionally heard as, “That doesn’t sound right,” and “Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place,” Gesturing to other figures that she jumps to, continuing her frantic writing. 

I’m really untalented in arithmetic, and I didn’t think Carlos’ usually-kind, now-impatient and urgent explanations will do much to ease my confusion. 

Whatever they’re working on, it’s probably important. I won’t hover, I don’t think my acolytical presence will help much in this case. Maybe if they were doing something more relatable like, I dunno, dissecting one of the many translucent, rubbery tendrils that often cause thousands of dollars in property damage when their draconian, unknown owner can’t figure out the morning sudoku puzzle. _Totally_ not something _I_ know about.

Anyways.

Yesterday was _something_. All days amount to that something, adding another touch of substance to what will become our eventual history, bullet points to sum up every menial act of **living**. 

Yesterday especially was important. Not because of the exponentially increasing, miniature farm animals that poured out of every NightVale manhole, or the mitosis-like way they seemed to reproduce. Not either, for the lude phone calls Carlos and I had after he made the mistake of tasting some of our own shaman’s love potions, claiming “There’s no possible way his can actually _work,_ I’m telling you it’s ridiculous,” at an ‘investigative field research trip’. He’s _adorable_. It was… thrilling, to say the least, hearing his lucrative imagination. 

_[Soft snickering]_   
I’d liked to have put those here on record- but his friend is here, I shouldn’t go into all the little details he so considerately included. Let’s just say, I was like, _really_ excited when he called the second time. I’ll have to pay Shaman Jackie a visit sometime.

Really. That’s not what made yesterday so special. To be honest, I don’t know _why_ yesterday holds this significance… or why today doesn’t feel as big and _bright._

I have made a log every day for several weeks now. I cannot find yesterday’s tape.  
 _[The sound of a door opening, Cecil makes a sound of surprise.]_ Oh, hello.

Cecil! Sorry to interrupt, but I need to ask you if you’ve been experiencing short-term memory loss? Specifically to the past week. Yesterday. Jazmine and I have been working some numbers and asking around, and we’re pretty sure yesterday _did_ happen, it’s just that no one remembers it now. When we went back in our records, it seems like this happens a _lot,_ and with longer periods of time. Months. Some of the people we’ve talked to can’t remember most of their childhoods, and not in the usual, I-blocked-it-out-because-it-was-terrible way, this is serious engineering. Cecil, even _I_ don’t remember how exactly I got here, to NightVale, in the first place.

Carlos, I think you’re onto something. God, it’s so _cute_ when you get excited about a discovery! Look at you, flushed cheeks and tousled hair, like you’ve been running your hand through it all _worried_ with your science-y things. I _don’t_ remember yesterday, of course, but that’s about all I can tell you. It’s not like we know where it’s even _coming_ from, right? 

Uh. Yeah, sure. Cecil, I’m gonna need you to keep recording your… thing. Just, keep track of the days, and let me know if anything happens?

Of course. Hey, and Carlos? 

Yeah?

I’m glad to have you back. _[There’s a pause]_ Oh. Oh my god, he’s blushing- and now he’s hastily closing the door, grinning and it’s so _cute._

I _do_ have a note, though. It is small, but meaningful; I am glad. I am glad to have Carlos, here, in person. I don’t know why, but I am so, _so_ grateful to know that this limerence has grown into something tangible, something beautiful. That, listeners, is important. I don’t know what I’d do if he were gone.

As far as the whole, memory-loss thing goes, I’m not surprised. It isn’t a secret that the Sheriff’s Secret Police have employed certain amnesia-themed tactics before to protect us from seeing and thinking things we shouldn’t be doing. What if yesterday never happened _at all?_ What if it were, simply removed from existence, like a gentle withdrawal from an indecisive bidder. What kind of a place would NightVale be, if we were fully _aware?_ Probably a boring one. I don’t think a little memory loss is unhealthy, maybe good for you, even! But if Carlos wants to get to the bottom of it, then who am I to say no? Who knows, maybe the answer is something _really cool,_ like the metallic, shimmering eyes that hovered just outside kitchen windows a few months ago. They wouldn’t have been so bad if they didn’t interfere with wifi signals, but you know how it goes. 

I think I’ve documented enough for today, I’ll check back tomorrow to provide an update. Hopefully I won’t lose the file _this_ time.

**End of recording #18**


End file.
